


I wanna boy who isn't anything like me

by MontagueBitch (porcia_catonis)



Category: The Magicians - All Media Types, The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Aftermath of hooking up with your best friend as a fox, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Foxes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 01:30:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6353518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcia_catonis/pseuds/MontagueBitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon Divergence:  Nothing is changed, except that Quentin's fox instincts led him to Eliot.  Quentin thought he'd stop wanting it when they transformed back</p>
            </blockquote>





	I wanna boy who isn't anything like me

**Author's Note:**

> For folks who only got here from the TV show fandom, in the novel, Eliot's class went with Quentin and Alice, because the issues with the beast had prevented them from feeling safe sending the students South that year. To ensure they still got that education, they all got sent. Also everyone turns into a fox, because Mayakovsky is fucking weird. To those of y'all who've read the book, the relationship is honestly the only thing I've altered here.   
> Also I'm taking some inspo from the show's explanation for the hookup itself, because believe it or not, I truly don't wanna write fox porn. So there.

> _One day, Mayakovsky announced that they would be transforming into Arctic Foxes for the afternoon (Grossman 153)_

Quentin might have said he couldn't tell who anyone was.  It would be so easy to just retcon it all, to say 'I was a fox.  Their brains are small, and their eyes are bad.'  He could, but he'd be lying beyond the bare facts about fox anatomy.  

Eliot hadn't been exactly unrecognizable.  Something in his mouth, the shape of his teeth made it imminently clear who he was, if the haughty, sleek way he carried himself hadn't.  And then there was the smell.  Oh god, the smell.  It was rich, and wild, and Quentin had nothing to compare it to in his memory, a thing he barely had to begin with.  He was too hopped on the rush of joy, drunk on adrenaline, and now starving for the smell; he couldn't have been certain he'd ever been anything but a fox.  And if he had, what was the point of it?  

It took a few rounds of playing, of pouncing, of tackling other furry bodies, feeling them squirm or flip him, or on one occasion--Penny--bite him enough to draw a few drops of blood before he found the connection.  The source of the thing that made him hungry, and thrilled, and a little intoxicated and the foxified Eliot were the same thing after all.  That might have been enough to stop human Quentin; he had the capacity, or rather, the flaw, that allowed him to question why he wanted things, to ask about stupid matters like 'but isn't Eliot a guy?  Aren't I straight?  Will this turn into one of those weird situations where you fuck your best friend and then things get awkward?'  Fox brains, for all their lacking optic nerves, were fancifully free of all of that.

He was free of so much like this.  No worries, no self hatred, no stupid questions.  No spells, no etudes, no past, no future.  There was simply the rush of the moment, the smell of Eliot, and the longing that was too strong to make its locus in any one place in Quentin's body, taking all of him over, instead.

It started with biting, with tackling--with Eliot rolling over and showing him his soft, unprotected underbelly surprisingly quickly before turning and bearing his back to Quentin.  There had been a rush of power as it began, a sense of relief so intense that Quentin barely noticed the cracking and changing of his bones, that his teeth in Eliot's fur had turned back to his lips on Eliot's collarbone, just as elegant and perfect as he might have imagined it to be.  Eliot, beneath him, free of the blissful padding of another body, came back to awareness.

"Q," he gasped.

"Mmmm?"  He wanted to say he wasn't back to himself yet.  But he had too many brain capacities now for that excuse.

"I'm literally going to freeze my ass cheeks off in this snow.  Hucking Fell, if you don't get me inside I won't have anything for you to grope."

"Oh.  Oh! Right.  Snow."  And as if reminding him it hadn't truly gone, only evaded his notice, the cold slapped Quentin in every direction, whipping his face with wind and a blast of powdery frozen helldust right there.  

They staggered back to Brakebills South, clambered into a bed.  Quentin had a moment's notice that no one was there yet, that they'd passed nobody in the hall, that there was no one in sight when they'd transformed back.  Later, he would wonder if he and Eliot weren't the only ones to slink away and feel things they'd forgotten they had in this tedious white wasteland.

They were completely human as they touched each other.  It was his human lips against Eliot's; it was Eliot's agile hand between his legs and then his mouth.  Quentin didn't, against expectation, find himself clueless when it came to touching Eliot.  He couldn't find the nerve to do more than stroke him, but that much had been something that excited him more than he thought it might. 

They warmed Eliot's frozen hide, and they kept it up with Quentin's face buried in Eliot's neck, and their long limbs twined together to share their own heat and the too-small blanket between two of them.  

Quentin had thought they'd be in trouble in the morning.  Eliot had laughed it off, and told him it was Mayakovsky's fault for turning them into horny, uninhibited foxes anyway.  Eliot was right, and no scolding came; only more work.

* * *

 

He didn't see Eliot again until after he'd reached the South Pole, miles behind Alice.  

He remembered the smell of him, feeling it hit him, the memory of a smell a bit too vividly washing over him the moment he saw Eliot.  He hadn't taken the grueling exam, too much of a delicate flower, as he would describe himself.  He had already started to lose the haggard, sad shabbiness that had only gotten worse in Quentin since taking the examination, and he was practically glowing in the suit he'd chosen, bathed in the Brakebills sun, laughing with his friends.

"Quentin, you're back from the trenches," he greeted him brightly as he approached.

"Yeah," he rolled his eyes, "had to get myself shot in the arm by a Frenchman, but they finally let me be a civilian again." 

And looking at Eliot, knowing he looked just as stunning underneath that pristine button-down, seeing his mouth move even in the most blameless capacity, Quentin had a realization tossed at him like a ball in gym class to his gut.  He'd been content to just assume that foxes didn't care about gender, and that he'd been touch-starved and been done with it.  He didn't feel terribly ashamed, and besides that, Eliot was a catch, so he'd gathered.  He hadn't had time to ponder this, half-frozen to death and dehydrated.  But now, with no excuse for ignoring his own head, he couldn't deny it.  He still wanted Eliot.  He'd liked being with him as a fox because he'd wanted him as a human, too.  Bisexuality wasn't something Quentin thought a lot about, usually, but within the past few moments, it had gotten stuck in his head like a chat-topping single.

"Uh, Eliot, can I borrow you for a second?" He threw a glance, pointed, at a certain gossiping best friend of Eliot's, and then back to him.  "Like, maybe inside.  In a room where other people aren't."

Eliot shrugged, and put the cigarette he'd been about to light back in his pocket.  "I don't see any harm in giving you an audience.   _Exusez-moi._  Kiss."  He allowed himself to be dragged inside by Quentin with only a flourishing wave to his previous company.  "Well?"  He raised a brow, waiting.

"Look, can we maybe talk about--?"

"Our night of frigid, hormone-driven passion?"  He didn't seem surprised, but he didn't seem appalled or unwilling, either.

"Yeah.  There's. Well, a thing about that."  He didn't know how to word it well, or clearly, so he didn't.  "I really enjoyed it."

"Of course you did.  I give amazing head. We hadn't had contact with anything in weeks."

"I know.  I know.  But that's not the point."  He knew he was making himself sound ridiculous, but there wasn't a way to bring up a crush brought to consciousness by a hookup in Antarctica without sounded a little batty, he was beginning to realize.  "The point is that it probably wasn't some accident of loneliness that made me specifically want it to be you.  And," he swallowed, "if it were, I would definitely not want to do anything with you right now, since we're normal humans again.  So."  His face burned as he thought of what he hoped might straighten all of this out--or _un_ straighten it, rather.  "If it was just the cold and the fox senses, then kissing you right now would be totally unappealing. And any attachment is completely platonic? So could we? Maybe?"

He wasn't done giving his explanation in a seemingly Socratic format when Eliot closed the distance and did what Quentin had been hoping he would for reasons that were definitely more than just answers to a question.  He was kissing back without a second thought, because when was he going to have a chance to kiss Eliot Waugh again?  And his arms wrapped around Eliot's shoulders, and he figured he was one of few people tall enough to do that comfortably.  

"Answered your burning questions yet, Quentin?"  asked Eliot when Quentin finally pulled his head away and dropped his arms with a certain degree of reluctance.

"Yeah, I think--"  Eliot put a finger to his lips.

"Or do you need a more thorough exploration?"

"Yeah.  That one."  He nodded.  "That sounds great."

It would take only three weeks later when Quentin and Eliot would be dubbed by their friends the most obnoxiously PDA-prone couple to be around.  Maybe it had to do with their pseudo-exhibitionist beginnings.  Maybe Eliot just liked the way Quentin squirmed.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. I took the title from "I Wanna Boi" by PWR BTTM. It's the best song for sweet Queliot feels. Do it.


End file.
